Alan Wilson’s homepage at CERN
Updated March 2011
My Research
I am a member of the ATLAS Experiment at CERN
and a visitor at the DO Experiment at FNAL.
My list of important publictions & presentations is on a separate page.
My research interests include measurements of diboson physics and supersymmetry searches.
By the beginning of 2009 I had switched to working with D0 data for a SUSY search, earning my Ph.D. in January 2011.
- The result of my Ph.D. work should be approved for publication soon.
- I am currently transitioning back to ATLAS.
Hardware
- I spent all of 2004 leading a group of undergraduates working on the “Phase II” commissioning of muon drift chambers
as part of the University of Michigan’s contribution to ATLAS’s “big wheels.”
- I was a major part of setting up building 188 for commissioning (later used by other institutions),
- I was the local expert on the gas mixing system,
- I coordinated the movements of the largest muon chambers and have CERN crane operations training, and
- I gained much experience diagnosing HV dark-current leaks, gas leaks, and problems found with data from cosmic rays.
- Along with an engineer and aided by an undergraduate I constructed a small chamber that is used to monitor the gas
flowing in and out of the ATLAS MDT system.
The gas monitoring chamber is based on the idea that what is more valuable than measuring the details of the gas mixture
is testing the precise quantities that MDT chambers measure.
Using cosmic rays at the surface of Point 1, the gas monitor chamber can make a precise check of quantities such as the
maximum drift time that are very sensitive to the Ar-CO2-water vapor mixture and contamination from air.
Other Service work
- I was involved with Muon Combined Performance Group most heavily back in 2005 around the time of the Rome workshop.
- For the last two years I have managed the diverse Monte Carlo simulation requests for D0′s New Phenomena (NP) physics group.
- I really enjoyed the experience and responsibility that came with my round of shifts for D0 data acquisition (DAQ).
(Fun fact: I was at the controls for the highest luminosity store as yet seen at a hadron collider, {$\approx 4\times 10^{32} \text{cm}^{-2} \text{s}^{-1}$})
Teaching
I taught mathematics (precalculus, calculus, and differential equations) for three years at the University of Michigan as a graduate student. At UM the math graduate students are given total responsibility for a class under the philosophy that
personal instruction and working in small groups is more valuable than any large-hall lecturing.
I enjoyed it and working with students is something I would like to do more of.
I’d like to think my teaching potential was noticed at an even earlier age when I was selected to work as an
undergraduate teaching assistant in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington.
I led a section on discrete mathematic and assisted with the computer graphics and embedded system design courses.
My Background
My education is in a spectrum of subjects from math to physics and computer engineering. As a child my hobbies included designing and building electronic circuits. I also built model airplanes and model rockets. How many kids do you know would be thrilled to receive a dual-channel 35 Mhz oscilloscope for Christmas?
Degrees
- BS, Mathematical Sciences (emphasis on physics), 1999, University of Washington, Seattle.
- BSE, Computer Engineering, 1999, University of Washington, Seattle.
- MS, Mathematics, 2004, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
- Ph.D., Physics (experimental particle), 2011, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Skills
- C, C++, and python programming. Some shell, Perl, and PHP programming, but I try to avoid it.
Years ago I loved Lisp and Scheme but really the most I did with that was some AI projects as a student
and Script-Fu for GIMP.
- ROOT. As a high energy physicists maybe I should appreciate all the things it does for me,
but I usually focus on all the things it doesn’t do for me (or inexplicably does differently than I expect).
- Microcontroller, PLD, and FPGA programming.
- Practical electronic experience (I could read a resistor from a young age…)
- Statistic calculation and theory, such as confidence levels.
- Woodworking and a little metal work.
- I can install Linux on your computer. Oh, wait, anyone can do that now.
Of course I’m talking about the version of Slackware that you download to 40 3.5″ floppy disks via your 9600 baud modem.
More about me
I grew up in Milton and Puyallup, Washington and attended the University of Washington in Seattle as a undergraduate.
I moved to Ann Arbor for graduate school in Mathematics at the University of Michigan,
but found I didn’t quite want to make mathematics a career.
I ended up spending 21 months at CERN working for the U. of Michigan ATLAS group on the muon drift chamber commissioning
and other muon and standard model physics software projects.
Near the end of 2005 I returned to Ann Arbor to finish up a Ph.D., but now in experimental physics.
Outside of physics the majority of my time is spent on photography, travel, web design, and small hardware projects.
I’m a heavy consumer of news from the high quality sources such as public radio, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The NYTimes, The BBC, and others.
- I have some interest in educational tools for physics and math
and have a few fantasies about building palm-sized physics demonstrations for the young and old alike.
- I love sharing knowledge about science, math, and technology.
- I can be careful and meticulous
and if I have a fault it might be that I err on the side of assembling an elegant solution over a quick one.
- On the other hand I can be crafty when I need to be: the example I like most is the 7-segment LED display board
I created in an evening or two on a whim for an undergraduate robotics project.
It was nothing fancy, using just an array of shift registers and drivers, but well beyond the scope
of our assigned project and yet an invaluable debugging tool.
- It has been 10 years, but I’ll get around to perfecting that robot someday.
Organization of this Web
These web pages are split up into three main sections right now,
- the ATLAS Analysis section covers my work and useful references directly related to the above topics,
- the Notes section is random notes, very specific and very general on many topics related to my work, and
- the Physics section is some educational material having to do with class work, working groups, and independent study.
References